


Fight Your War

by orange_8_hands



Series: Second Generation Roll Call [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Abandonment, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Case Fic, Character Study, Daddy Issues, F/M, Fallen Castiel, Gen, M/M, Original Character Death(s), POV Female Character, POV Third Person, Vessel Fic, Wordcount: Over 10.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-09
Updated: 2012-01-09
Packaged: 2017-10-29 06:01:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/316569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orange_8_hands/pseuds/orange_8_hands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In no known universe would this count as dealing with your daddy-issues in a healthy manner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Warning** : This deals with Castiel using Jimmy as a vessel, and Dean erasing Ben/Lisa's memories.

**i. what happened to pigeons**

She's spinning her empty bottle on the table and watching Ben at the bar try to flirt and charm and sweet talk his way into free drinks and after the bartender's shift free sex. He's a good looking guy and knows how to pull vulnerable eyes, but he's also a cocky asshole, which has just as many women tossing drinks in his face as offering him condoms, and Claire is always down for a free show.

There's something buzzing under her skin she's trying her best to ignore. It's not exhaustion from the job they just finished (simple wyvern; track it to its nest and burn the fucker, and using blow torches would never not be the coolest thing ever) and it's not lust (like how they usually split the room on sex nights - because fuck if they're getting separate rooms for a few hours of fun - she'd already picked up and dropped off her lay of the night, and if the guy didn't shut up he also hit her sweet spot every time he moved his hips) and it's not jealousy (she's locked into the asshole, has been somewhere between meeting him and their twelfth salt and burn, their forty-ninth motel room, their sixth narrow escape, their first whispered confession, she's never been able to pinpoint it, but she's never wanted to be his everything and she knows he doesn't want her to be his) and she's stuck, restless, trying to figure it out and deny it at the same time. There's a couple of memories trying to intrude and she wants nothing more than to buy a couple of rounds of shots and see if she can drown them out that way, but she's very careful about either of them turning into alcoholics like the rest of their world and today is not one of the days she allows liquor to numb her into the next morning.    

Years later, she can still feel what having an angel come inside her meant, like it was happening fresh all over again, like she just said yes again and Castiel _burned_ through her, belief and glory and grief and the absolute abhorrence to the still-there cracks of doubt, hastily, bloodily scribbled over but still there. Claire thought she understood the world in those fifteen, twenty minutes he lived inside her skin, thought she understood the universe, but then one day she came across a tan trench coat in a salvation army and just stood there staring at it until the clerk tentatively asked if she needed an ambulance, or to call someone, tears running down her face, crying without sobbing, and she realized why Castiel felt so familiar. She was the same shoddy paint job covering tracks of a broken faith. She was the same despair of a father who was not only missing but purposefully left. (He said yes, that first time, when there was no gun to his head, when her mom was giving him the ultimatum between whatever his mind was cooking up and his _family_ , and she wonders if her father ever even fucking hesitated.)

She was, it turned out, the human equivalent of a soon-to-be-fallen angel, and it was not the landing that hurt, it was the first push out.

Claire recognizes that these are not good thoughts to be having, not now, not ever, and since apparently the earlier sex hadn't cured them and she wouldn't give herself the option of alcohol the only thing left was running, pounding the pavement down and blasting music and letting her mind go easily, kindly blank. She catches Ben's eye and makes a little walking motion with her fingers, waits for him to nod and turn back to the bartender before leaving the last of her ones on the table and heading for the door. It's not until she's dodging the patrons littering the bar that she realizes the crowd size must mean its the weekend, and its a small jolt to her system, how she loses awareness of whole days passing, how it can be Friday before she even acknowledges Tuesday.

She sees the man peel off and head for the door right before her, a move designed to follow someone by keeping them behind you, and she doesn't change her pace as she slips her hand in her pocket and presses the little phone call button twice, knowing it would dial her last call and Ben was - always was - her last call. She slides a switchblade into her left hand and keeps her right in a loose fist, punches through the door and scans the people scattered in front of the bar. She heads to their truck while straining to hear something, someone coming at her as she moves through the darkened lot. 

The man - man-shaped, at least - is waiting near the truck. If he's human he's white, mid twenties, with the same face she's seen in every town across the Midwest they've ever stopped in, like there's an All-American Pretty Boy who spread his seed across the country like Genghis Khan and its still producing sons. He looks like someone who knows how to throw a punch, and more importantly, like someone who can take it.

"Christo," she says, coming to a stop by the driver's door, because looking human is about as worthless as finding a penny on the ground.

He laughs, but his eyes don't change. Not a demon at least, which is always a big fat check in her good column, because demons are really the only thing they hunt that scares her, down-to-the-bones-terror kind of scares her. Being a human against other humans (she's a woman, those are lessons from puberty), being a hunter against other monsters (claws and teeth and mind benders and spikes and being thrown into walls), its never going to be as hard, as dangerous, as being an overturned vessel in front of a demon is. Bleeding while rescuing some stupid hiker from a wendigo is a thousand times different from bleeding because a demon chained you up and wants to crack you open like a nut, play singed nerves like a violin, break bones into fine dust and sprinkle it into eyes held wide open. 

He laughed though, which means he knows about demons, and being at the truck means he's been watching them (the buzz under her skin hadn't felt like eyes watching her, but maybe that's what it was.) Maybe he knows Ben's circling his way over to act as sniper back-up, or worse, he's not alone and Ben's dealing with his own mystery man.

"What do you want?" she asks, because hey, sometimes villains really do fucking monologue their motives to you.

"I have a message for your father, Claire Novak," he says, and she's already throwing herself to the floor even as he's bringing up the gun he hid behind his back. She's rolling under the truck as she hears the muffled shot, already popping out the other side as the man curses. The parking lot is filled with vehicles and there's a crowd not twenty yards away - he obviously didn't want to be noticed or he would have done something inside the bar - but she's not playing hide and seek with this guy, not with a guy who brings up her connection to Castiel, so even as he starts to head around she's rolled back under, this time popping up behind him like a fucking jack-in-a-box. She still has the switchblade in her hand but can't stab him in the neck - can't kill him, not without trying to find out things like why - but she also needs to incapacitate him so this doesn't devolve into a fair fight. (Claire is really fucking strong, and even fucking faster, but she's also five-six and this guy has about fifteen broad, muscled inches of shoulder on her, not to mention her head just about comes up to those aforementioned shoulders, and yeah, fights can be won by brute strength, don't be fucking stupid.) She stabs him in the shoulder instead, dragging the blade down instead of pulling it straight out, and she's jumping back as he's roaring and throwing his fist at her. She misses the first swing but he's following her backward motion and he grazes her with his second.     

It hurts, just that barely tapped blow hurts, and she knows if he gets even two straight punches to her face she's going to be a bloody pulp attached to a neck, so she takes out his longer reach by rushing inside his personal space and thrusting the knife across his stomach. She lands an upper cut to his jaw and dodges his slick hands to pull back enough to deliver two short jabs into his sternum, just her perfect height, and it's enough to stop his breathing so she can topple him down and stamp his face in with her boots. 

She kicks him twice more in the sides, mostly because she's pissed and still has plenty of adrenaline, but he's out, nose a demolished mess and jaw probably broken. He's still kind of breathing so she didn't break his neck at least, and then she hears footsteps and has her gun up and out when Ben comes into view. He looks okay, eyes doing their own circuit over her body to make sure the blood she's sporting isn't hers, and when he gives her a nasty grin she returns it. 

He hooks a thumb out to the front of the bar, and says, part relieved and part disgustingly because in his heart of hearts Ben wants to believe the best of people, "Nobody's even noticed."

"Yeah, humans are kind of self-centered assholes like that, Ben," she says, leaning down to search him. She finds a wallet, two knives, keys, and a disposable camera, and leaves Ben to tie his hands behind his back and duct tape his wounds shut so they'll stop bleeding out for the moment while she scoops up the gun he dropped and the shell he missed with. She drops it all in the backseat and comes back to help Ben lift the two hundred plus pounds of unconscious probably-human into the truck of their car (fuck, dead weight is heavy), not being especially careful about keeping his head from bashing into the lifted hood. Ben washes away the evidence of the fight as she cleans up with baby wipes and ditches her shirt for a no less dirty but at least bloodless tank top (they need to do laundry.)

"You want to try to find his car?"

They cover the lot but his little key fob never makes a clinking motion and Claire is still antsy, still has that buzz underneath the adrenaline flooding her system, and she wants out of here, so they get in their car, Ben driving, and Claire asks "What happened with you?" as she starts to flip through the wallet.

Ben gives her a look - _one of us was standing over a body, Claire, and it wasn't me_ \- but answers. "Got your call, saw you leave the front door, took the back and circled around and found you kicking the shit out of that guy. Better question - what the fuck happened to you?" 

"Nobody was watching you, following you?" Claire keeps her eyes peeled for any tails, watching the rolling blackness behind them. There's scattered lights on this part of the freeway, enough for her to be semi-confident there's no cars following them with their headlights off.

"No," he says, with exaggerated patience. "Now if you could maybe, you know, in the next ten seconds, tell me what the fuck is going on, I'd surely appreciate it Claire."

"You're an asshole when you don't get laid," she says, because violence makes her mean and all she can do is sit in the passenger seat and wait for them to get somewhere very, very deserted.

"Claire."

"Course you're an asshole a lot of the other time to-"

"Claire, give me some fucking details."

"Guy left the bar right before me, was waiting by the truck. Said 'I have a message for your father, Claire Novak,' then took out his gun and missed from three feet away, which is really kind of embarrassing for him." She lays out the wallet's guts - no ID, one credit card with probably a fake name, two hundred bucks in twenties, and a folded piece of paper with a list of what she assumes are bars in the area, the first four crossed out and the fifth one - the name of the one they were at - circled. She shows it to Ben, who glances at it before going back to the windshield, hands whitening on the steering wheel.

"How did he know we were in town?"

"Someone could have planted the wyvern," Claire offers, but shakes her head before Ben can. "But yeah, that's both pretty difficult and pretty ridiculous, assuming we'd be the hunters to go after it."

"Someone could be tracking us with our cell phones."

"Maybe. We should ditch them either way."

"Yeah." He shrugs. "Someone could have stuck a bug on the car."

"You watched way too much Batman and James Bond as a child."

"It's not completely out of the realm of possibilities, Claire."

"Yeah, but who stuck it on? Another hunter?"

"I didn't say that," Ben says quickly, which means he was thinking it but wouldn't admit it.

"Not like hunters haven't tried to kill other hunters," Claire says quietly, leaving _like the Winchesters_ unspoken. "We've never been favorites."

"No, we really fucking haven't," he says, and she leaves him alone because everything about Dean and Castiel is a hole a mile wide in him, and there's not enough concrete in the world to fill it.

 **ii. backstory, side a**

Here's how the mothers got killed:

Lisa and Ben got kidnapped and Lisa got taken for a demon ride and the demon stabbed her in the stomach with a razor when Dean exorcized it and the hospital couldn't work miracles but Castiel sure could, he cleared her right up, no problem. And then four days later demons tracked her and Ben and this time there was no Castiel, who was busy being God or what the fuck ever he thought he was doing, there was just two humans who couldn't remember shit about what a hunter they also couldn't remember told them, and Lisa did what parents have been doing for millennium and sacrificed herself so Ben could get away.   

That's one.

Amelia and Claire lasted awhile because they really weren't important in the scheme of things, they were just an empty, now useless vessel and a vessel's wife/mother, and picking up empty vessels really were milk runs and besides which, apparently Castiel and the Winchesters were busy letting the demon's Lord out of its cage, aka fucking Lucifer, so Amelia and Claire were okay for awhile. The three of them diverted the apocalypse and the world went a little quieter (Claire was learning what to look for in newspapers, it wasn't silent) and a couple of years passed and then Castiel walked into a church and killed a preacher and changed a stain glass window, and then he got fucking creative and went around healing some people and smiting others, killing angels like it was going out of style, and he did all this while still wearing Jimmy's face, thanks a fucking lot, and Claire was apparently Jesus. Or something. Whatever it was, it became a lot easier to make some connections she really didn't want being made and then yeah, a lot of things started going after them with a vengeance, humans and demons and angels, but demons won the round and reached them first.

So that's two.

(This will never just be about fathers who left. It is about mothers who stayed. It is about mothers who died.)

 **iii.** death **is a fine invention**

They go to the motel first, keeping eyes open and guns ready, grab their bags (which always stay packed) and drop off the key, and then they're following the crinkled map to an empty spot in the middle of nowhere woods, nothing followed them out there, and wrestling to get the massive lump of still breathing (Claire is a little surprised about that, honestly) body out of the trunk.

"Um, I don't think he's going to be able to tell us much," Claire finally says, after they stand there watching the guy breath (-ish) for a few minutes.

Ben tries the smelling salts, which makes the guy moan but doesn't change his conscious status. 

"Hospital or ditch?" Ben finally says, after kicking him in the side, once, twice. (She's assuming he didn't actually think that would wake the guy up, but who knew what the fuck Ben thought sometimes.)

"Ditch," she says, because demons taught her that one. No loose threads. Ever. Or they'd come back to choke you.

He starts to get his gun out but she waves him off, grabs her knife and slits the guy's throat. It is always a big deal to Ben and it just isn't, not nearly enough of one, to her. She's never been sure if that's because she watched just as many humans gunning to torture her and her mom raw, or if it was a little leftover humanity-is-pain-infested-self-hate attitude from Castiel, but killing humans was on par with her killing vampires. Monsters get put down, end of story.

People trying to kill her or Ben? Close enough.

They dig a hole (maybe not the full six feet but fuck, it hadn't started as a long night with the wyvern but now it was) and roll his body in, then Claire squirts some lighter fluid and Ben tosses in the match. They move the car so they have a good position to get out without anyone noticing, but still watch the flames, and Ben takes first watch (such a gentleman) while she sleeps.

Five hours later Ben nudges her awake. She swipes her hands over her face, trying to rub in some energy, then picks up a shovel and starts to dump the dirt back over the still smoking body. Bones are done, so no ghost they need to worry about coming back to find ten years down the road, and even if they dig the guy up - assuming they can find him in the first place, assuming someone knows to look for him in the first place - he's not in much shape to be figured out. "You could have given me a shift," she finally says, somewhere between grateful and annoyed, tapping the dirt down. 

He shrugs. "I'll nap while you drive."

"Drive where, exactly? Or just out of here?"

He taps his finger against his leg, which means he'd been thinking while she slept. "I figure we should get at least an hour away, and then you definitely need a shower and I can use one too. We can get food while the pictures are being developed, and then..." He pauses, seems to steel himself. "I think we should go to Bobby's."

She pauses as she's about to get back into the car. She really doesn't know why everyone still calls it Bobby's, since he's been dead seven years now. And she really doesn't know what to say, because of the people who took it over. 

" _You_ want to go to Bobby's?" she repeats. Amy Cho serves as their entrance into the hunter's community; she throws them cases and a voice saying _of course that's Agent Jackson and Merrill_ and sometimes has answers to their _what the fuck is that thing_ questions and most of all she's there because neither of them will pick up the phone and use Dean Winchester or Castiel, Angel of the Lord, aka God 2.0, aka now-human as their main contact, _fuck. them_.

"Unless you think this guy was after _Jimmy_ , this has something to do with Castiel, which means we're probably going to have to talk to them." He says it reasonably, like _of course,_ like duh, like he wasn't President of the I-Hate-Them Club (pretty impressive, because it's a big fucking club), like he didn't once break his hand punching a wall after a two-minute phone conversation with them. 

"Uh-huh." She gets in the car, waits until his seat belt is on (and if that isn't proof she isn't Amelia Novak's daughter even after over half her life in this world she doesn't know what is) before heading the car to the road. "Sounds like a plan then."

"Awesome," he mutters, and she does them both a favor and ignores his instinctive flinch at the word.

 **iv. backstory, side b**

Here's how the fathers ditched them:

Jimmy started talking about a voice, a voice who said he had work for him, a voice who said he was part of God's plan, and Amelia sat him down after he stuck his hand in a boiling pot of water (she doesn't know how he didn't get third degree burns) and told him all of his talk about angels was scaring her, and she was going to take Claire to her mother's if he didn't go get some help. Then one night, wearing the ill-fitting suit he last put on for his dad's funeral, Claire sneaks down to check on him because if he was talking to the sky again her mom was going to be mad, and he turned to her and said "I am not your father," and disappeared for nine long, long months. And then he came back and demons were real and Claire said yes to Castiel (what else was she going to say, it was her _parents_ ) and he begged, blood bubbling out of his mouth, _take me_. 

The rest of it - the new God and being hunted and her throat raw from screaming, screaming for her mom broken bleeding dying wearing a demon, screaming for her dad why did you leave how could you leave come back, screaming for Castiel help please help us you promised him help us - was Castiel, the end, let's move on.

Dean came one weekend when a changeling was popping through the neighborhood, and then two years later, grief etched into his body and alcohol pouring out of his skin, he came back, moved in, and actually became a really good dad, if you ignored the constant drinking and crying and sometimes trigger temper and that he thought he had an equal say in Ben's life (so, not really.) Ben was ten and had lived those ten years without him, thank you very much, even if one smile, one _awesome, kid_ from Dean was like fucking Christmas to him. Then Sam came back and Dean went on the road (and stayed there) and then demons fucking broke into their house and kidnapped them and then Ben didn't remember any of it and his mom got fucking killed saving his life, and getting his memories back definitely didn't fucking help, didn't make it better, didn't make her alive, and there's no apology big enough Dean can make. 

He bounced around his mom's cousins' houses and practiced his shooting and reading up on lore and left the day he turned eighteen, he was going to hunt them all down, never mind Dean and his quiet _I never wanted this for you_.

( _Fuck. Them._ )

 **iv. well okay then**

They follow Ben's plan because, well, it's the best one they have. She drives them for a few hours and then pulls into a motel, shaking Ben's shoulder because out of the two of them he definitely looks more presentable (less blood, dontchyaknow.) He grabs the key and gives her first shower (and better, a chance to brush her teeth), dismantling their phones to leave behind and asking Amy to put out feelers, and then when it's his turn she takes over the laptop and searches for any reference to something happening in the bar parking lot.

"You find anything?" Ben asks, putting on his shirt.   

"Not yet," Claire says, and they drop the film off and try to find somewhere to eat that isn't fast food. (Claire only eats fast food when she's desperate and Ben - for all his calm, for all it was his plan - doesn't want to get to Bobby's any time soon either.) They end up at a casual Italian restaurant, which is probably a mistake because even the Caesar salad Claire ended up with tasted disgusting.

They pick up the photos and discover only two of them have a kind of blurred shot of Claire and all the rest are too dark to make out more than the most basic of human shapes. ("We were followed by someone with the skills of a _fruitfly_ ," Claire says. "This is too embarrassing, we're telling them he was more competent than _this_.")

Ben ends up back behind the wheel but Claire can't sleep, can still feel that buzz as a low hum. She digs out their jar of peanut butter, kept behind the passenger seat for when they needed some energy to keep going and were a hundred miles away from any kind of place that served food, but the first spoonful - her dad handing her the spoon, always the first choice of snack to give her even though he was allergic to it - tasted like ash in her mouth and she could barely swallow it.

(Did Castiel have her dad's taste buds or his own? His allergies or new ones? And fuck, _fuck,_ when would she stop asking herself these questions? H e said yes and she needed to get the fuck over it, he came back as soon as he could and sacrificed himself in a hot second for her. Wasn't like she could really expect her dad \- unassuming Jimmy Novak - to say no to some celestial being of _Heaven_. Wasn't like she didn't say yes too, even if she was _ten_ and her mom was a fucking _demon_ at the time and her dad was just giving up his family because a voice told him to, it was still an angel and you weren't taught about the reality of angels in Sunday School.)

"Do you think we would have been friends?"

She drags her mind back to the car and Ben and replays his question in her head, but it's too far from her thoughts and still doesn't make sense. "Huh?"

"If, I don't know, we meet in high school and none of this demon crap was real."

Claire stays silent. There is no good answer to this question, and it's such a what if she can't even wrap her mind around who she was going to be before an angel came crashing into her father.

"I think about it, sometimes, is all. Who we would have been."

He lapses into silence and somehow they get all the way to South Dakota without saying anything else, both of them getting tighter and tighter wound once they cross the Nebraska border. Less than two hours later, they pull into Singer Salvage Yard. Ben had been there once and Claire none, but that wasn't why they stayed in the car taking the place in.

"Come on," Claire finally says, and they were on the porch about to ring the bell when Castiel opens the front door, jeans and a shirt and probably a gun behind his back, face serious like always, looking like a hunter, looking nothing like an ex-angel and ex-God and all like Jimmy at his most inanimate. The buzz she's been ignoring is a roar and maybe it's been that last taint of Castiel's grace this whole time, maybe that tiny little spark was trying to tell her something this whole time, and it probably wasn't trying to suggest punching him but that's what Claire does anyways, and she's honestly not sure if it's because Jimmy said yes and never said sorry or because Castiel asked and never said sorry either.


	2. Fight Your War

  


**v. take me back to the day**

She wonders sometimes if Dean still has that instinctive flinch back when he crosses one of Castiel's lines. If in the very back of his brain, the very recesses of his mind, he still has an angel turning to him, has an angel saying to him, "I serve heaven **,** I don't serve man. And I certainly don't serve you." She wonders (too often) if Castiel will always and forever be, first and foremost, a creature who rescued him from hell, who claimed the title of God, who created black-winged graffiti across the world because he was so sure he was right.

For ten years, faith was as comfortable as a warm glass of milk on a sleepless night, her father's soft hand cupping the back of her neck during sermons, the always slightly amused look on her mother's face when her dad made her misshapen pancakes with blueberry faces. It's not that she didn't still believe (his grace _burns_ , his grace _drowns_ ); angels and demons and God were real, stole her family in greedy pieces, gave her a ring side seat to an apocalypse and made her prey, made her a hunter. It was that she could never quite lose the first ten years of awe underneath the crushing hatred that followed them. That even past the thousand and one ways she fantasized about banishing him (can't kill him, her dad's eyes and mouth and nose and how can she kill him? how can she tear through Jimmy's skin?), she still has the smallest sliver inside of her who remembers what he feels like, what an _angel_ feels like. 

He takes the punch well, definitely not his first, catches his body like a hunter, like a fighter (sometimes there's no difference between the two), braces for the next move and prepares his own. Then he sees her face, sees her, and it's maybe regret, it's maybe guilt, and she wants to know if he realizes his sins add up to more than possessing her father and killing her mom.

(She said yes because she didn't know, and now she does, and if it's not a lie it's not the whole truth either.)

"Claire," he says, and she has to close her eyes, has to, his voice - soft, hesitant, and it's being ten, being eight, being five, this is her father and home and safety and she'll never get it back - and then she realizes it's not her father's voice, it's really not, too deep, too weighted with the sense of the world as he says her name, just her name.

"Cas, you gonna let us in?" Ben finally asks, and Claire startles, flings her gaze away gratefully, her father's blue eyes without her father behind them, and is it any wonder she avoids mirrors?

He flicks his eyes to Ben, his head tilted slightly as if he needs to rummage through his mind for the idea of manners, and then he steps aside. She skirts around the hand he half raises towards her and leads the way through, walking as if she knows the place, as if she owns it, as if she has a right to be here, a trick she learned in school (between her father disclaiming her and coming back with demons, when she ditched friends and ditched classes and learned how to avoid detection from security guards) and perfected in hunts, walk like you have permission and they assume you do. The surprisingly bright green hallway leads directly into a living room/library, one long black leather couch next to a massive oak desk, piled high with what she assumes are lore books. The walls - behind the bookshelves and some truly awful band posters - are a cheery yellow, and the place is clean if cluttered. A devil's trap is painted on the ceiling and she's sure there's another one under the rug, and she can't help picking up what looks like a Walkman EMF meter, which is impressive because she didn't know they still _made_ Walkman.

Castiel comes back with two bottles, already opened so he could probably bless the water. (Did he need to pray or could he just mojo it holy? How much angel was really in him?) They both drink, and if she has to swallow half of the bottle to steady herself, Ben is decent enough to do the same. It's hard to see Castiel, not just because he looks like (is wearing) her father, but because he's aged, he's animate and animated now. Lines bracketing his eyes, the softest hint of wrinkles spreading across his forehead; this is what her father looks like, ten years later, gray threading his hair, older when he never got a chance to age. Castiel stole it from him and now he's _living_ it.

"Why are you here?" he finally asks, and makes a motion with his hands (not her dad's gesture, but a _human_ gesture) like he wants to put them in pockets but doesn't have them, even though he's wearing jeans. She can feel a coating of bile settle in her throat.

"It's about a hunt. Is Dean around?" she adds, because she knows Ben never will.

"I'll get him," Castiel says quietly, and leaves them in the too cheery room. She grabs Ben's hand because they both need it and he won't, and fights to keep the Caesar salad from lunch where it belongs, in her stomach and not over the living room floor of the body-snatching-ex-angel-ex-God.

She doesn't take offense when Ben gives one more painful squeeze as they hear a door slam, boots stomping down the hallway (they're hunters, its a courtesy Claire would appreciate but its from _them_ , and appreciating them is asking too much while she sits in this too nice house with something wearing her father's _skin_ ) and drops her hand, and then Dean comes through.

He looks better than the last time she saw him; not hard, considering his brother was drinking demon blood and an angel just told him to get bent, not to mention the whole starting-the-apocalypse thing, even if he is over a decade older. She can't help cataloging all the features Ben has in common with him, even if neither of them are sure if he's biologically Dean's, and also can't help looking over at Ben to see if he's doing the same. Her stomach gives another rolling twist and she wonders if that's what she looks like when she saw Castiel, love and hate and fury and grief and it's way too emotional, way too expressive, way too raw to be on their faces in any situation, much less this highly tensed, more than slightly hostile context.

This was such a stupid idea she's pretty sure Darwin is making room for the new first prize winners. They could have just fucking _called_.

"Ben," Dean says, his voice hoarser than she remembers. He makes a motion forward, as awkward as the hand Castiel raised to her, but there's a better chance of her and Castiel hugging (does he smell like her dad?) than there is of those two doing so. He catches himself, rocks back quickly, gestures for them to sit on the couch.

"Can't say I ever expected you here. Either of you," he adds with a fleeting look to Claire. There are two Deans vying in Claire's head for attention, just like she knows there's two Castiels in Ben's. One is the hunter who rescued her and her mom from demons; the other is the fucker who destroyed Ben's whole world.

It's not like Claire was ever actually good at small talk, so she just answers his implied question. "Two nights ago I was exiting a bar in Colorado when a man followed me out, said 'I have a message for your father, Claire Novak,' and tried to kill me. So far the only lead we have is Castiel, so here we are."

There were a lot of ways this could have gone down, Claire thought of tons of possibilities on the drive over here, and watching Dean and Castiel exchange a glance was on the list, so no, their reaction wasn't a surprise. It was a relief, truthfully, because they really didn't have any leads on this. Amy had told them she hadn't heard a peep about anything related to them when they called just before getting here, and going to his father/creature-who-killed-her-father to see if they knew anything, breaking years of radio silence, was not the most logical or well thought out plan. This was about Castiel, but he made a lot of enemies when he played God, had a lot of perfectly normal people up in arms against him, this could have easily been someone who recognized her from the few short years ago when Castiel was redesigning windows in his image, so if coming here worked it was going in the exceedingly small plus column.

"So Cas kind of pissed off a Jezebeth Phix," Dean finally tells them, oh goody, because pissing off the supernatural always worked well for any of them.

 **vi. meet and greet**

Being thrown through a plate glass window hurts. Sharp little pieces of glass digging into your skin for a thousand cuts, sinking into fabric in a way you can never untangle no matter how long you sit there with tweezers, toss'em in the trash because they're a lost cause. Not to mention - falling from a second story house also hurts, no matter how much you stick your landing.

It was not fate or destiny or what the fuck ever that had her pulling up to the house just as some guy's body went flying out the second story bedroom window to land with a painful thud on bended knees (she gives the body points for recovering mid-air) and then staggering back inside, weaving like a drunk trying to walk a sobriety test at Checkpoint Charlie. She hadn't been planning on checking out the haunted house that night (vampires two towns over, _weren't they supposed to be extinct?_ , and she would've made a sparkle joke because that still wasn't old, but one of the vampires had a _sweartonotgodfuckgod_ actual diamond in his tooth, and she was too embarrassed on the supernatural community's behalf to make some snappy banter, not like her audience of dead creatures cared) but maxed out credit cards meant a night in her car, and she might as well be close to get an early start the next morning. And running into another hunter while working the same job was not that strange; for all they were a tiny community (and apparently God walking around smiting people still didn't bring the hoards to the realization monsters were real) there was only so much country and so many jobs ( _you missed a few Castiel_ ) out there. 

So no, it was coincidence - and not the kind of coincidence that was really the supernatural fucking with you, but actual coincidence - that had Claire arriving at her next job with a hunter already on it and maybe failing. It's not that there wasn't a lot of bad blood between a lot of hunters and Claire, but Amelia Novak raised her daughter right and someone in need was someone in need, even if the last time she went to help a hunter he pulled a pistol on her, fucking asshole deserved what she did to him. 

Claire grabbed her shotgun, her extra bag of salt, her lighter fluid, and her tire iron, swinging out of the car and moving swiftly to the front porch, eyes and ears peeled, both for the ghost and Mr. Body, she'd rather lose her life to something mindless like a rawhead than to friendly fire, what an oxymoron. She sneaks a peek through the front window and realizes she's kind of unnecessary, the ghost is doing that melted-disintegration thing they do, the hunter keeping his gun cocked as the - chair? _seriously?_ \- burns with the steady flames of someone-squeezed-lighter-fluid-on-me. She's taking in the hunter - white, probably six feet, slight hint of baby fat still gracing his cheeks, black hair and brown eyes and one of those hunter's bodies that are all muscle and probably a lot of scars - when she sees something flicker. She's slamming through the door, yelling duck even as she takes her shot, and thank _notgodfuckgod_ he follows directions and hits the floor just as her rock salt bullet hits the ghost, who just like she figured was suddenly standing where the guy was so it could push or choke or squeeze his heart out of his chest.

The guy's already rolling off the floor, swinging his shotgun up and placing his back to hers so they can keep eyes on all corners of the room. She can smell the chair burning, not as bad as bones and definitely not as bad as bodies but not fresh cut daisies either. She figures he has more information than she does, considering she barely touched the research and he picked right for one of the ghosts (though the second one seemed like a surprise to him so not _much_ more info), so she calls out, "Where's the second object? Or the bones?" 

"No bones, it's an object. Has to be tied to the chair." He mutters it more to himself than her, but she hears fine.

"Cushions?"

"Burning as we speak."

"Throw pillows?"

"No..." he trails off, and she can actually feel him thinking. "Blanket," he says suddenly. "Attic. I'll take point."

"Lead the way," she tosses back at him, keeping two-thirds turned from the direction they're jogging in, so she can still see him and where she's going and as much of their backs as possible. By the time they make it to the attic stairs - those rinky-dinky kind that pull down from the ceiling and have steps you have to walk on your tip toes for - he's fired twice and she's on five. She follows up the stairs on her heels ( _see, mom, it did come in handy_ ), keeping them back to back, and she can feel the hand he keeps low on her back through her jacket, keeping them tethered together so a ghost can't get through, arm twisted slightly and probably uncomfortable. 

"Northeast corner," he says, and heads over there. The ghost appears again, the persistent fucker, but she holds it off with the last of her shots as he uses the rest of his lighter fluid. She's down to her tire iron and she moves away enough so she can swing it without taking off the guy's head, and she's cursing softly, "light the fucking blanket light it come the fuck on" and finally he drops the match, the blanket goes off, flames moving like the best kind of dance, and the ghost - about to try to shove her again - does its light-up-from-the-inside routine and disappears to ghostly heaven or hell or whatever, not her domain.

"Okay," he says, and then gives her an appraising look, half cocky smirk and half genuine smile and probably all bullshit.

She gives him one right back. "Baby, sex with me is more than 'okay,'" and yeah, she does the air quotes.

And then she proves it.

**vii. pesky little bloodlines**

She hasn't been high since the night her dad came back and demons followed him home. (Having an angel inside of you sure fucking cleared out your system, and having demons gunning for you made the idea of being compromised scarier than any subsequent lessons from D.A.R.E. ever could.) She has a drink now and again but her mom's brother was the video they showed before prom on the dangers of drinking and driving, and her mom's dad was the lump of waxed, sweaty skin stretched over a body dying of liver disease, scarier than any rated R movie her mom wouldn't let her see at that age, so Claire is very, very careful. Knowing what she knows about Dean, and hunters in general, she keeps just as tight a watch on Ben when it came to matters of liquor oblivion.

So she isn't actually going to search for a little white packet of goodness and she's not actually going to take the tequila bottle she's sure they have somewhere in the house and finish it off, but she's perfectly fine admitting she desperately, desperately wants to. There is no part about this situation that isn't painful, but just because Claire never actually went to therapy doesn't mean she doesn't know words like "coping mechanism." She's seen enough daytime television to have a healthy respect that while talking to the ex-angel, ex-God-who-killed-her-parents-but-kept-her-dad-around-like-a-favored-suit is fucked up, epic levels of fucked up, adding things like liquor would definitely not help in the long-term, no matter how much nicer the next hour would be.

""So Cas kind of pissed off a Jezebeth Phix," Dean says.

"Feel free to expand," Ben says when he doesn't add anything.

"A Jezebeth Phix is a creature of falsehoods and lies. In the mid-1300s a small following began to gather under the teaching of San-"

"Okay, nerd, they don't need the whole documentary show, give'em the Phix highlights," Dean interrupts, clasping a hand on Castiel's shoulder, who he drifted closer to without it really registering to Claire. He squeezes once and drops his hand, makes a wrap-it-up-motion with his other.

Castiel rolls his eyes (Claire's gut _lurches_ , _human human human_ ) but gives them the highlights, a shame really because Claire actually kind of likes history, and not like a little extra supernatural knowledge ever hurt anyone. "A Jezebeth Phix started as human and made a deal with a Jezebeth, a creature that closely resembles your lions. They are turned into half Jezebeth-half human hybrids and are made to root out the untruths of flesh."

"A sphinx?" Ben asks. 

Castiel frowns at the inaccurate terminology, but without looking Dean elbows him and says first, "Close enough, no wings though."

"And it got pissed at Cas," Ben prompts.

"Last week we were doing a salt'n'burn when one of'em showed up. Apparently we were in its territory, and it got pissed because Cas here's rocking the vessel lo-" Dean cuts himself off abruptly, eyes flicking away from Ben to Claire, and she blanks her mind, blanks her face, fuck them, blanks it all, _he stole her dad_ _fuck him_ , she won't give them the satisfaction of flinching.

"So because Castiel was turned into a human looking like my dad the thing thinks its a lie?" she asks, and her voice doesn't tremor once.

"Yes," Castiel says, not looking away from her, head tilted just slightly, watching her carefully.

"And this relates to a human with a gun coming after me how?" (They ran some tests before they burned him, she's pretty sure he was human.)

"Wait," Castiel says, pivots to grab a yellowed small book and hands it to her. She's careful to keep from physically touching him and she thinks he's doing the same, but he flips it to the right page as she holds it and Ben comes over to read over her shoulder.

Ben and her snort. "Yeah, we can't actually read ancient Greek, Cas," Ben tells his puzzled face. "Not without a shitload more dictionaries."

Castiel makes a quiet, disapproving _hmm_ as Dean laughs, takes back the book. "To summarize, the passage remarks on the Jezebeth Phix's dealings with humans. According to this source, they routinely employ humans tied strongly to their flesh to kill those who have flesh that lies, with the promise of making the human into one of them."

"So shouldn't it be gunning for you then?" Claire asks, but has a good idea of the answer anyways.

"He may have gone after you in the hopes of finding me. He may also have gone after you because you carry -" He hesitates, as if trying to think diplomatically.

"Angel taint," Dean says, and this time it's Castiel elbowing him.

"A similar scent," Castiel corrects, which, _scent?_ Doesn't really make it better.

"Or he's just fucked up," Dean offers after another too long pause. "Dude's going around killing people to turn into half a lion, who the fuck knows what he's thinking."

"Well thanks for the warning," Claire says, and it's really not as bitter as it could be, considering. All hunters feel like they're living on a very small hourglass, grains away from their bloody, violent death, and Claire always thought of hers as one mistake away from shattering. (She wonders if Castiel fucked up her chances to get into Heaven, which is only desirable for not being Hell.)

"We truly didn't know you were in danger, Claire," Castiel says, and its so painfully earnest, like Jimmy sitting Claire down when she was eight and being bullied and _Bug, I really think if you talk to this girl you'll become friends_ and when will she stop hearing her dad's voice in her head? When does she get to call the end to grieving? She misses her mom to the depths of her bones, but it's not this wretched snatched away feeling she has for her dad.

(He came back. He came back, first moment he could.)

"We really didn't," Dean echoes, suddenly quieter than he has been, like he pressed the volume down on his energy. The sound of sincerity, but the guy's been lying since he was four years old (she's read the book series, and definitely skipped the sex scenes) so the tone doesn't mean that much.

"Yeah," Claire says, because its easy to forgive them this, a stupid hunter mistake but not a fatal one (or at least, not fatal for them.) This is such a small crime in light of all their larger ones; it is not the first time her life was at risk, not even the first time because of them, and it's a lot easier to be casual with her life than the other ones they took. 

"So what kills it?" Ben asks.

"Probably cutting off its head and toasting it," Dean says as Castiel, glaring at Dean, answers, "If you can fool it, it destroys itself." 

Ben and her exchange glances. "Burning seems a lot easier, Cas," Ben tentatively offers, and the dirty look the ex-angel, ex-God, now human hunter throws at them is kind of funny.

 **viii. if you wondered what she thought about**

She never thought there would be a worse day than Jimmy Novak saying "I am not your father" and walking away from his family.

 _Me, just take me. Take me, please._

She was wrong.

 **iv. something like a plan**

They're driving off road to the middle of nowhere to call the thing onto them, just in case "neither Dean's eloquent idea of burning it nor my plan to confuse it works and it destroys more than just the four of us" (that Castiel, fun guy), and Claire is restraining the urge to elbow Ben as they sit in the Impala's back seat ("like your truck can fit everyone" Dean says when Castiel made a move to drive, and doesn't even pretend to look over to their car, the control freak.) He's fuming at the back of Castiel's head in the passenger seat, and of course she recognizes it, its the only child syndrome look, the one that says _just because I'm not using it/don't want it doesn't mean I want someone else using_ my _object/place/position/idea_ . Ben is not even close to being okay with Dean, an inanimate object could figure that one out, but it doesn't mean he's happy watching someone else get to sit co-pilot with Dean, especially in the car he didn't use when he lived with Ben, especially doing something he didn't want Ben to ever do.

(There was one very brief moment of almost "you two should stay here," but Dean let it dry up on his tongue at Ben's furious face, and Castiel probably didn't have an opinion on his ex-vessel/person-his-current-look's-based-on kid's dangerous life, so Ben and Claire, after avoiding them for years, were apparently road tripping a hunt with them.)

Dean is playing AC/DC low and no one is really talking much, not unusual for any of their lives, no one can chatter on a long drive every time, but it's not as hostile as she expected it to be either. Dean is in his zone, humming a snatch of lyric every once in awhile, and Ben, when he forgets to glare at either of them, does the same. (She's always been pretty sure Ben is biologically his; having the same characteristics - only some of which could be chalked up to the year they lived together - seems like the most proof she'll ever get, considering Ben won't do a DNA test, not after everything, lies that he doesn't care any more.) 

Claire actually manages to catch a nap by the time they pull into an apparently different stretch of nowhere land. It's grass and dirt, rolling hills of it miles from civilization, a perfect place to call down some supernatural shit on their heads and remain unseen. She and Ben clamber out behind the seats and all of them stand there for a moment, as if waiting for someone else to make the first move. Finally Dean shakes his head and Castiel and him head around to the trunk. Ben cracks his neck and Claire scrubs her face, shakes out her arms, moves her long knife to an easier reached position. Dean comes back around and hands Ben a machete, keeps the second one for himself. They walk far enough away from the Impala so "flying monster chunks don't get on my baby," and then Dean prods Castiel forward.

"You're up first," he says, and both he and Ben move a few feet away, machetes ready for even a whiff the Phix is going to attack, leaving Castiel to stand just slightly in front of Claire, so he can catch the Phix's eyes first. She'd feel better holding a weapon in her hand, but Castiel had argued over her and Dean that he didn't want the Phix to immediately attack them.

("How is no weapons gonna keep that from happening?" Claire asked as Ben and Dean sharpened the machetes.

"The Jezebeth Phix must first engage its victim in discussion, in whatever language it has. If the victim makes no overt movement, the Jezebeth Phix can happily spend hours talking to the victim before slaying them."

"So like you and staring," Dean tossed out, and laughed at Castiel's flipped finger.) 

Castiel cuts out a small piece of his flesh from his inner arm, grimacing, and Claire wraps the bleed quickly before he drops the piece to the ground and starts the incantation, voice clear as he says "ψέματα της σάρκας ονομάζουμε για να φάνε ανΘρώπινη σάρκα."

Nothing happens through the first rendition of the chant, nor the second, but mid-word through the third and a tunnel of dirt swirls from the ground, becomes the solid shape of an androgynous human head on the body of a lion, tail as sharp looking as a blade, its coat a shiny golden color it hurts to keep your eyes on for long. The human-ish head has a mane of black hair and almond shaped eyes, as black as a demon's, the thinnest suggestion of lips and nose below them, ears more like a cat's than human. Its beautiful like the moment of death is beautiful, like a horde of rampaging rhinos is beautiful.

"Zonac qaaon ip hommil," it growls at Castiel, paces before him with flowing grace, as if it wants to circle him like water, muscles flexing like it wants to pounce. It comes back to stand directly before him, then snaps its face to Claire, a momentary flicker of confusion crossing its face. "Same lies," it says, but sounds uncertain. 

Castiel makes a slight bow with his head. "She is fully human," he says, voice and body position respectful.

"Not fully," it says, following Castiel's lead and speaking English. The faintest buzz underneath her skin flares, the one that hasn't stopped since the bar. No, a few days before that. Maybe since the routine salt and burn that landed Dean and Castiel in this creature's path. Maybe this thing made the speck of angel left inside her stir.

"Born of human and never changed," Castiel disagrees.

"Touched," the creature snaps.

"Untouched again."

"Same lie as you," the creature says.

"I was once of Heaven, and now I am of Earth. Untouched also."

"Once touched, deceiver," and the creature bares its teeth, "Always touched. You wear a lie." 

"I was once a lie. No longer."

"Not fully human," the creature says again, and Claire is suddenly very, very curious why it cares.

"Yesterday no, but today I am."

"Humans must stay human."

"You were once fully human, and yet now you are not," Castiel says, and the creature howls. Dean and Ben both twitch, but Castiel covertly waves his hand hanging by his side to keep them back. "You take other humans, and change them."

The creature looks like its collapsing inside itself as Castiel speaks, and it moans low at his last word. "We are..." It takes a long breath, tries to steady itself on wobbly legs. "...outside of this world."

"Than so are we," Castiel says, and the creature falls, thuds to the ground, and Claire can feel the impact of it falling, feels the ground shake under the hit. It looks like something dropped from a thousand stories up, flattened and broken and blood pouring out, black eyes glassy, tail like a varnished blade. The coat loses the bright sheen and just looks matted, a blond-brown instead of gold.

"We actually killed something by talking it to death," Ben remarks after a long silence, or maybe even asks, wonder evident, and yeah, Claire really didn't expect this to work either. No blood, no bruises, no broken bones? Did it even count as a hunt if she just had to stand there? "What the fuck was that?"

"Anti-climatic?" she offers, because seriously, what the fuck?

"Soldiers do not always need to fight with swords," Castiel answers her, and then smiles at the disgusted look Dean gives. "Many of the old creatures only know violence, but this was not one of them."

"Um, Cas, that wasn't actually an explanation," Ben says.

"As I told you, confuse a Jezebeth Phix enough and it will destroy itself. I had occasion to watch once. This was the argument the human used on it."

Dean rolls his eyes.  "We're still gonna toast it to make sure, right?"

"Yes, Dean," Castiel says, and his voice is fond.

Dean nods, tossing the machete back and forth in his hands, like playing hot potato alone. "Damn right. We should chop its head off too."  
   
"I will do so," Castiel says.

"Take all my fun then, Cas," he grumbles, but jerks his head, a message for Ben he still picks up even though its been years, and they both go to get them all shovels and lighter fluid. Castiel takes the machete off him as he passes, moves over to the head to slice it off. Claire joins him when the first cut slides, grabs the head to keep it still so he can saw through the thick neck.

"So fully human?" Claire asks, concentrating on the steady sawing motion. "Because there was something..." She doesn't know what to say, doesn't know what to ask.

Castiel pauses to look at her. "You may still feel my leftover grace, Claire, but you are fully human. You always have been."

"And you?" she counters, not sure what she is arguing.

"If-" he stops, wets his lips. "If I was in a vessel, I would not be. I would be an angel in human form. But whatever I once was" - _a God_ , Claire's mind supplies, _you were a God_ \- "I came back as human. The creature's attention was caught on the form being made from power, and not born as flesh usually is."

"Okay," Claire says, and relaxes when after one more brief moment he goes back to slicing off the head.

By the time Dean and Ben get back its off, and they work in twos, Castiel and Dean, then Claire and Ben, to create a hole big enough to stick the creature in. When they finish, Dean squeezes lighter fluid onto it and holds up his lighter.

"Who wants the honor?" he asks, and Claire elbows Ben so he'll take it, because he's wanted to hunt with Dean for a long time, and she doubts they'll ever have the chance again, too likely one of them will die before Ben forgives Dean, too unlikely someone trying to kill Claire will lead them back to this, to them. (Cell phones. Great invention. Much better than having to look at her not-dad.)

Dean and Castiel offer first watch while they wait for the fire to burn the body out so they can cover it, and the low murmur of their voices creates a small hum to fall asleep to, like a song, like a lullaby, and Claire fades off to her father's voice like a small child.

**x. let's not do this again**

They exchange stories of hunts on the way back, the ones that make them sound smooth, sound competent, and not the time Ben almost shot his own foot off or Claire got cursed to sing in verse, and the only reason she still wasn't was because the spell wore off, not because they managed to catch the witch who did it. Dean tells them the funny stories, about the ghost who looked like Charlie Chaplin (it wasn't) and the wendigo that left its victim's intestines in bows, apparently that's how wendigos court each other.

Like always, the way back seems to take less time than the way there, and they fall silent as they enter the salvage yard, as if suddenly remembering the shit ton of history they cart between them, like they all haven't been carefully tiptoeing around Castiel's God months, like Ben hunting wasn't the last thing Dean wanted for him. The awkward, hostile silence felt more natural to Claire than the buddy-bud tones, because pretending he was her father's twin, his identical twin, still didn't make it all okay, couldn't erase everything that came before, couldn't bring back her mom.

They get out and stand outside the car, Dean and Ben in similar (the exact same) poses, hands in their pockets and scowls on their face. Then Dean darts close, grabs Ben in a brief, hard hug, and let's go, both of them blushing from the tips of their ears. Dean clears his throat.

"You're a good hunter," he says, and Claire feels an almost wave of affection for him, because even at his most furious, most disappointed, Ben craves Dean's approval, its behind every one of his rants about hypocrisy and Dean hunting when he was his age. "And if you ever want to call, or come by..."

She can feel Ben swallow, give a short nod, but he gets into their car without another word, hands flexing on the steering wheel. Dean turns to her, smiles shakily. "Nice to see you, Claire," he adds, and with one clasp to Castiel's shoulder he leaves them alone, left to consider each other carefully.

"You try to hug me and I'll kill you," Claire says bluntly, and Castiel flashes the smallest smile before tilting his head slightly, her father's face so serious.

"There are many things I should say to you, Claire," he says, voice soft and deep and kinder than she ever thought it could be. The ex-angel, ex-God, now human, looking like her father only older than she ever got a chance to see him, and the ache is deeper than bone, down to her soul. "An apology is only the first of many." 

She squashes her tears down, keeps them locked in the box in her mind, never to be let out because one tear would turn into a river, into a flood, not a big enough dam to stop it all. Her voice trembles, but she manages to ask, because stealing her father and smiting people as God and letting her mom die, if it wasn't personal she could admit it was logical, but this...

"Why did you agree? To take him back, instead of using me?"  

Castiel contemplates her for a long time. "Your father once compared having me share his flesh like riding a comet. But that is nothing in comparison to his love for you and your mother." He lifts a hand, but makes no move towards her. "We are taught to appreciate sacrifice, Claire. It was...only just that I let him make that choice."

"I can't forgive you," Claire says around everything else caught in her throat.

"I do not expect you to."

"You still look like my dad."

"It was not my choice to match my vessel when I was turned human, but it would be untrue to say I do not have fondness for this form. I do my best to honor his flesh, Claire, though I promise you he no longer shares it."

Claire nods, looks away, closes every emotion tight and sticks it back in that box, locked and double-locked once more. "If any angel could, I think it would be you," she says, and doesn't get into the car fast enough to miss the way his eyes close, the soft look of gratitude spread across his face.

"You ready?" Ben asks as she buckles up, his version of checking in.

She smiles, leans back in the passenger seat, and plucks the cheap plastic shades onto her face, gives him a slight punch to his arm.

"Just fucking drive, Ben," she says, because yeah, she will be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I spent about ~~twenty~~ ~~thirty~~ forty minutes perfecting the Enochian phrase the Phix says to Cas, and then found out after painstakingly copying it out letter by letter the symbols don't freakin show up, so I went back to find the English phrases but at that point I just wanted to be done, so I kind of took whatever happened on hand first. Basically it says "clothed in your creation not truth" and ignores any rules of grammar Enochian may have. The chant is based using a computer translator into (modern) Greek and says "lies of flesh destroy the fabric, we call for you to eat the flesh." The Jezebel Phix is a combination of the demon Jezebel (of falsehoods and lies) and the Greek version of the Sphinx (sometimes spelled Phix), who in some stories died by throwing herself off a cliff when her riddle was answered correctly. (And yes, I agree, it was a pretty stupid hunt.)


End file.
